Content farms: their past, present and foreseeable prospects
The Internet is, first and foremost, content. This is everything we click on, publish in order to satisfy our own curiosity or need for entertainment, learn something new and useful for ourselves, purchase certain goods, services, tell about ourselves and our business, make a profit and more. All this has led to the fact that the network is now experiencing an era of oversaturation. There is already too much different material here, and not always of really high quality and useful for the target audience. Surely many of you have already felt the influx of low-quality content, which is somewhat reminiscent of second-rate fast food, conveyor assembly without any adherence to standards and even an elementary desire to create truly high-quality and useful publications for the audience.
In this case, we are talking about materials that are generated and published by content farms. They are primarily aimed at mass content creation exclusively for search bots, namely, in order to play with algorithms and ensure the maximum number of clicks, improve engagement rates. Practice shows that such farms can create thousands of articles monthly. The most striking example here is the company Demand Media, which published 1 million articles in one month, the total volume of which exceeded 4 annual English-language Wikipedias.
Another distinctive feature of content farms is the low cost of articles. Freelance authors were initially used for their production. Considering the fact that there are practically no requirements for the quality of such materials, performers managed to earn considerable sums simply on volumes. To issue such articles, you do not need to be an expert in any niche or even have basic knowledge in the matter. But recently the situation on the market has changed somewhat, which is due to the emergence of large language models.
Modern content farms have begun to use generated materials everywhere. So, according to the latest research, the NewsGuard report states that today about 150 well-known world brands use content farms controlled by neural networks in their work. With their help, it is possible to create a huge number of articles daily, including practically without human participation. And the fact that this trend is gaining popularity causes a lot of controversial opinions in society.
In today's review, we will dwell in detail on what content farms are, we will talk about how they create materials and why this is bad, as well as clickbait. Let's talk about automated solutions powered by artificial intelligence and how they negatively impact the modern marketing market and harm traditional media. We'll talk about the measures that search engines, like Google, take to combat content farms and low-quality publications in general.
What is a content farm
The term content farm refers to the process of creating articles for blogs, websites, social media posts, videos and other materials as quickly as possible. We've already talked about the fact that the main goal here is to operate search algorithms, create the appearance of active work on the site, thereby increasing the visibility of the site in search results, attracting a new audience, and increasing organic traffic. And here many may have a completely natural question: can all companies that actively work on their sites, regularly create and publish materials be classified as farms? No, otherwise any internet presence would get such a label. The thing is that content farms use a practice that is not typical for other platforms. And now we will try to highlight the key differences.
The first thing I would like to draw your attention to is the very essence of a content farm. It creates digital materials not for the target audience, but in pursuit of large volumes of materials, clickable topics. They are characterized by the following distinctive features:
- Low-quality content. These are mainly materials that do not contain any benefit for the target audience. Their reliability is highly questionable, and the presentation itself clearly leaves much to be desired. Such articles do not have a consistent presentation of thoughts or structure. By and large, such content can be presented in the form of regular articles, but in practice, such publications as frequently asked questions, instructions, guides, and so-called listicles are most often used.
- Huge volumes of publications. We have already mentioned that content farms can create thousands of articles per month, or even more. They are literally posted in batches every day on various sites. For many companies, the development of such materials has become simply a banal means of earning money. Today, a term such as "quick content" has appeared, which experts in this niche do not like and claim that it leads exclusively to negative consequences. Search bots also share this opinion, because they have recently begun to actively identify such publications and remove them from the index, and new materials are not ranked at all or are immediately classified as spam.
- Lack of trust from the audience. Despite the abundance of materials published on the Internet today, more and more people are paying attention to expert-class materials. Those that will contain value, usefulness, and reliability. Even people who are not too deeply immersed in the materials can identify the low quality of articles generated by content farms. As a result, they simply stop visiting such sites, or even leave negative reviews and comments.
That is, the content of the farm is what creates low-quality materials that literally clog up search results, misleading advertisers, search bots, and ordinary users. Alternatively, the same advertisers think that they have chosen a good platform for placing ads and have ensured excellent engagement rates. But in fact, they have simply wasted their money, because such content does not attract the audience.
What methods do content farms use to create materials?
We hope that now you already understand that the vast majority of content farms create really bad content. Moreover, not very ethical methods are often used in its preparation. In particular, the following possible options should be highlighted here:
- Scraping materials from third-party sites without obtaining the appropriate permissions. It turns out that they simply start collecting information from various sites. This is a kind of theft of intellectual property, which, unfortunately, in most cases remains unpunished.
- Machine translation of publications from foreign languages and their presentation as their own materials. Also theft of intellectual property, albeit with minor revisions. In this case, it is possible to obtain high-quality material if you choose the right source, but such actions are still illegal.
- Collecting content from different sites and combining it into one material. This is also an automated theft of intellectual property, but with the difference that in the end it is often possible to obtain materials with a higher uniqueness, since the final material will be a "hodgepodge". But such materials are practically unreadable and their usefulness is reduced to a minimum.
- Using artificial intelligence for mass article generation. In most cases, the result is plagiarism or partial paraphrasing, but the volumes here are more than impressive. The main advantage of this method is the minimization of real human work. The main tasks are performed by the neural network independently, and human control is very insignificant. In this case, the quality of publications will also be much to be desired. Practice shows that artificial intelligence can become an assistant in content creation, but only in combination with expert verification.
If you walk through online pages, even people who do not have certain skills and knowledge will be able to identify materials created by content farms. They will stand out from the general background due to the low authority of the materials, their poor presentation. In addition, such publications are too saturated with advertising, since advertisers primarily focus on high page traffic, which ultimately turns out to be fake. The design of the page will also be of poor quality and ill-considered. All those links that will be placed in the text do not make any sense. They do not lead to related pages, are not designed to increase the depth of viewing by users of the site. Their main task is to simply play with search engine optimization. Here we should also add plagiarism, low-quality images, lack of attribution, unconfirmed information, and obvious guesswork.
All of this will indicate that the author lacks certain knowledge in this area, and even an unwillingness to work with the material, to make it high-quality and useful for the audience.
So why is a content farm bad?
Everything we talked about above is intended to convince you that in practice you should avoid using a content farm. The problem with such materials is hidden in the peculiarities of their creation. We have already said above that most of them are plagiarism. And this is not only, let's say, an ethical problem. It has a much more serious impact on the SEO indicators of a single page and the site as a whole. In addition, there is often such a thing as cannibalization, in which the original work's performance is reduced, while its copy, stuffed with keywords and optimized for search queries, on the contrary, will appear higher in search results.
But these ethical issues are rarely of interest to companies that are engaged in such activities. They care about clicks, not audience satisfaction. They do not care that their activities are damaging a real business, one that has invested a lot of effort and money into promoting its online presence. Content factories have simply learned to deceive search algorithms, which ultimately leads to devaluation of search results and reduces trust in search engines in general.
Advertisers also suffer seriously in this case. They pay a lot of money to have their ads displayed on high-quality sites, ones that are visited by a lot of people. But here they will not get the desired results, since such "farming" gives only short-term results. It is not aimed at satisfying consumer demands. This means that real people will not visit such sites. As a result, the advertising budget is wasted, the return on investment is reduced to a minimum.
Here we would like to draw your attention to the fact that not all content farms conduct such activities. Today, there are also those sites that strive to maintain ethical standards, have experienced authors on their staff who have experience in a certain niche. But, unfortunately, there are really only a few of them. And still, they will use, let's say, not quite "good" methods. In particular, to attract the attention of the audience to their publications, they use clickbait.
Are clickbait headlines good or bad?
The very essence of clickbait is to collect as many clicks as possible, that is, clicks on links, openings of materials. And here it is quite possible to conclude that there is nothing wrong with this method. This is exactly what almost every marketer strives for in his work. But is everything really so? Alas, everything is quite ambiguous here. And one of the key problems here is that all this is achieved in not entirely reliable ways. And this is what causes discontent not only among users, but also among search engines.
Clickbait is mostly a loud and even provocative name that attracts the attention of the audience, makes them follow the link, that is, click. But the problem here is that such a loud name hides low-quality content, mostly not even corresponding to the announced title, not responding to user queries. That is, its main task is exclusively to attract an audience. That is why today many experts associate this method with deception, false advertising.
This similarity has led to many users, and experts in general, putting clickbait on the same level as content farming and considering it a side effect when working on the Internet. Moreover, many articles produced by farms use clickbait headlines to enhance the effect. And all this continues to be actively used in the market. Moreover, after the active introduction of artificial intelligence technologies into the preparation of materials, the situation has changed and has become even more popular. Now we will dwell on this trend in detail so that you can assess its scale and draw the appropriate conclusions for yourself.
Content farms, spam sites from neural networks
Now we want to introduce you in more detail to the research conducted by NewsGuard. This is one of the most famous organizations today specializing in the fight against disinformation and monitoring the reliability of news platforms. So, their research showed that artificial intelligence has been actively used by modern businesses to create content farms for several years in a row. The first figures were obtained 2 years ago. Then about 50 sites were identified, the content of which was completely created by neural networks. In February 2024, this figure was already about 750 sites, and at the beginning of 2025 - 1500. Today, this figure has increased even more, having exceeded 2000 and the trend is extremely disappointing.
NewsGuard specialists came to the conclusion that in this way, online site owners generate a colossal amount of materials on any topic, including quite sensitive ones, such as health, finance, politics, technology. Sites were identified that published hundreds of generated articles daily, turning into a classic content farm.
Against the general background, such materials are distinguished by fairly similar names, repeating phrases. There is a huge amount of advertising on such pages. Moreover, for many of these sites, this very advertising has become the main source of income. They are also characterized by misinformation, and even absolute lies. Moreover, all this is spread absolutely calmly and without a twinge of conscience. These are exactly the criteria that we cited as the main points indicating the work of content farms.
According to NewsGuard experts, this trend is not planning to decline. Moreover, they predict its active development in the foreseeable future, because it is really fast, convenient, gives the desired result, while requiring minimal time and money to launch. But not everyone will bother with the ethical and moral side of this issue. Moreover, modern content farms based on artificial intelligence have become serious competitors mass media, simply parasitizing on them.
Accelerated growth rates of automated content farms
One of the latest NewsGuard reports indicates that today there are many content farms on the Internet that work using artificial intelligence and have hundreds of sites on various topics at their disposal. They have literally put advertising earnings on stream, deceiving, among other things, even well-known world brands. Moreover, they manage to disguise themselves as large media outlets quite well.
That is why experts recommend checking the URLs of the sites you plan to connect to more than once, so as not to fall for such a trick. At first it may seem that you are on the official website of a particular media outlet, and only upon closer examination it becomes clear that you are looking at a fake. Moreover, the text itself may well be taken from a real media outlet. But for the most part, it will be so distorted, reworked that it will be almost impossible to study it normally, to understand the essence of the content. And even if you walk through other pages of such a site, you can also find many similar stories that resemble an incoherent remix of several original works.
All this will indicate not only a content farm, but also that it has automated its work and now uses artificial intelligence in practice.
Along with NewsGuard, the DoubleVerify platform, which specializes in tracking media analytics and online advertising, also conducted its research. Thus, as part of this work, more than 200 sites were checked, the bulk of whose content consists of materials generated by neural networks. Fragments of content taken from real media were used as source data. This study showed that these projects designed their sites so carefully that they resembled real sites belonging to official media as much as possible.
It turns out that a person visiting such a site will be able to understand that he is looking at a fake only after a more detailed acquaintance with the content. Most often, content farms fake news resources, and very popular ones at that. For example, ESPN, Fox, NBC, BBC, CBS.
All this clearly proves that the intensity of the growth of fraudulent activities with the advent of artificial intelligence has begun to increase at a record pace. And, unfortunately, this trend shows no signs of abating. Moreover, all these schemes are aimed at ensuring that bots not only create content, but also consume it, inflating the number of views on the site's pages, and along with this, increasing advertising revenue. This leads to the fact that such websites not only waste advertisers' budgets, but also take away advertising revenue from real media. And the larger the content farm, the more sites it has at its disposal, the more significant its income will be. What kind of moral component can we talk about in this case?
"Synthetic Echo"
We would like to separately highlight the work of the content farm "Synthetic Echo". This study was also conducted by DoubleVerify specialists. They found out that there was a group of webmasters behind this farm who began to copy materials from other sites, generate stories using artificial intelligence, and combine both of these methods when preparing materials for publication. As a result, they did not just create fake news, but simply formed a random set of low-quality content. Moreover, “Synthetic Echo” did not even bother with design development, but simply transferred it from one site to another.
In parallel with this, representatives of this farm manually rewrote the original content of the famous sports news site CBS News to their site NBC Sportz, removing all the original identification marks and publishing it on their pages. They also did the same with the Detroit Free Press, reprinting their licensed material and publishing it under the authorship of the media outlet. Such actions became the start for the launch of legal proceedings.
Also, we can highlight the sites NBCSport.co.uk and BBCSportss.co.uk, which have nothing to do with official media. All the materials presented on them are generated by neural networks, as indicated in the DoubleVerify report. If you conduct a more detailed check, it turns out that these sites do not have any contact information, email, or any other related information. As in the case of NBC Sportz, both of these sites were registered through Namecheap.
All this once again confirmed the fact of many years of use of well-known media by representatives of the Synthetic Echo group, trivially reprinting their materials without permission. But today, thanks to the active use of artificial intelligence, all this can be done by criminals at a much higher speed. By and large, the theft of someone else's intellectual property is a fairly common global practice. But it is precisely thanks to neural networks that this entire process can be scaled more actively.
The number of sites whose content is generated by neural networks is increasing from year to year and, unfortunately, this trend is not planning to decline. This is perfectly demonstrated by the figures indicated in the study by the NewsGuard organization, which we cited above. The same report indicates that many such farms operate abroad and conduct their activities extremely secretly, which significantly complicates their detection and fight against them.
Is everything so beautiful with the media?
Another unpleasant thing about this whole situation is that even real and well-known media outlets have begun to actively use artificial intelligence in their work. They also post articles generated by neural networks on their official pages. There are also already known cases where scammers simply buy up media domains and then use them to create a content factory. At the same time, truly unique original journalism is replaced by low-quality generated materials.
As a result, ordinary users are really confused. They simply do not understand who to believe and who not to believe, where is the truth and where is fiction. As an example, we can cite the situation when one of these farms generated an announcement that a parade would be held in Dublin in honor of Halloween. As a result, a huge number of people came to the event, which the city authorities did not plan at all, in anticipation of an original spectacle.
The process of identifying fake sites is further complicated by the fact that they literally copy the corporate style, voice of the brand of real media outlets in small details, but at the same time they promote obvious garbage. It has also already been proven that a number of such sites were also engaged in phishing. DoubleVerify's research included a site that imitated the Fox news channel. The attackers were located in Nigeria. As a greeting, pop-up ads selling dubious software were launched on such a site.
All this once again indicates that working with the Internet for ordinary users is becoming increasingly difficult, requires utmost attention, additional checks. Otherwise, your actions will provide significant assistance to attackers in implementing their dishonest plans.
Launching monetization through advertising networks
Here we will return again to the fact that the main purpose of launching content farms will be to ensure income. Despite the fact that pop-up windows look extremely suspicious, that the content itself is low-quality, that its headlines are clickbait, such sites manage to make very good money on advertising. They launch it using large-scale automated tools, excluding direct contact between their representatives and advertisers. Banners are actively used here, including those managed by really popular and quite decent advertising networks, such as Criteo and Sharethrough. This is also indicated in the DoubleVerify report.
If we return to the example of the group "Synthetic Echo", then it is worth noting that as a starting point, the attackers chose the topic of sports, as one of the most popular and universal in the world. In addition, of all the areas, it is considered one of the least dangerous and sensitive, unlike the same political news, health, finance. So, on the sites belonging to the group "Synthetic Echo" advertising of such giants of the technology market as Oracle, Asana, the leader in the field of e-commerce and Net-A-Porter, the famous chain of resort hotels Kalahari Resorts and even the brand of the cosmetic industry Sephora was noticed.
And all this is happening against the general background of a sharp decline in trust in the media, a decrease in the income of a huge number of news publications. They suffer serious financial losses, not receiving income from advertising, losing their audience.
An attempt to solve the problem of content farms from Google
Content farms are what causes discontent on the part of ordinary users, advertisers, the media, and search engines. In particular, the latter began to classify their content as “black” methods of promotion, since it does not carry any value for the reader. And here everything is clear, since we are talking about cheap, voluminous materials created specifically to appeal to search engines for the purpose of elementary promotion. All this led to the fact that search engines began to change their approach, and with it their algorithms. And Google was the first to start active work in this direction. It began to rely on high-quality, unique and fresh material that can attract natural and relevant links. Here, informational honesty is already present, first of all, for ordinary users, and not for increasing the value of the site itself to the detriment of reality and originality.
All this has also made corresponding adjustments to SEO promotion. Now the focus is on satisfying user requests and improving user experience. Cheap tricks and low-quality copies will no longer be at the TOP of search results. The good things about Google updates include the Panda and Penguin algorithms, because they are designed for sites that strive to work for the target audience and provide people with unique and useful original content. And now the search engine will highlight such pages against the general background.
In connection with the launch of such a policy, many sites were forced to review their materials, delete pages thoughtlessly generated by artificial intelligence and replace them with worthy materials. If your site has also fallen under the Panda or Penguin restrictions, then the only thing that can restore its operation is a complete rework of the content, design optimization, and improved interaction with the target audience. Here we would like to draw your attention to the fact that Panda has updated target websites that, according to the algorithms, were more focused on sales, so blogs and social networks have been left without attention for now. They can be used to return customization through the search engine.
The fact that such a trend will become relevant not only for Google in the foreseeable future is quite predictable. This means that business representatives today need to focus on preparing content not for search engines, but directly for the audience, for real people who will find useful and valuable information for themselves here. This is also relevant when working with social networks and any other online platforms.
Let's sum it up
It is still difficult to say that content farms are already a relic, because they continue to work, and quite actively, generating tons of content through various neural networks. Despite the fact that quite active counteraction to such works is now being launched, there is no way to say with high reliability that the situation will undergo radical changes. And this means that both website owners and ordinary users and advertisers need to be extremely careful and not fall for the tricks of scammers.
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